Credits Bandoneón, Composer, Director and Arranger Guitar Bandoneón Violin Vocals Piano Cello Double Bass Dancers Ernesto Baffa Aníbal Arias Juan José Mosalini Miguel Angel Varvello Osvaldo Montes Héctor Silva Fernando Suárez Paz Pablo Borzani Raúl Di Renzo Juan Carlos Godoy Nina Miranda Osvaldo Requena José Colángelo Nicolás Ledesma Diego Sánchez Horacio Cabarcos Aurora Lubiz, Luciano Bastos Artistic Directors Stage Manager Sound Engineer Gustavo Mozzi, Gustavo Santaolalla Alejandro Bertoli Gustavo Weht Produced in association with Pablo Farba Programming and Production. 7
8 Songs Contrabajeando
Tonight s performance includes: Al Maestro con Nostalgia Milonga de mis Amores La Mariposa Fortín Cero Todos los Sueños Guitar Aníbal Arias Bandoneón Osvaldo Montes Vocals Juan Carlos Godoy Piano José Colángelo Piano José Colángelo Maula Vocals Nina Miranda Taconeando Retrato de Julio Ahumada Por una Cabeza Volver Tanjuango La Puñalada Contrabajeando El Choclo Garufa A Fuego Lento Griseta Mano a Mano Duende y Misterio Verano Porteño La Cumparsita Dancers Aurora Lubiz and Luciano Bastos Vocals Juan Carlos Godoy Piano Osvaldo Requena Violin Fernando Suárez Paz Dancers Aurora Lubiz and Luciano Bastos Guitar Aníbal Arias Bandoneón Osvaldo Montes Vocals Nina Miranda Guitar Aníbal Arias Bandoneón Osvaldo Montes Bandoneón Miguel Angel Varvello Vocals Juan Carlos Godoy Piano José Colángelo Violin Fernando Suárez Paz Guitar Aníbal Arias Bandoneón Osvaldo Montes Dancers Aurora Lubiz and Luciano Bastos The programme and performers are subject to change. 9
Feature The Golden Age of Tango: CAFÉ DE LOS MAESTROS 2004 10 Text: Peter Culshaw The tango is still very much alive in Buenos Aires with milongas (tango gatherings) held every night of the week. It is generally agreed however, that the golden age of tango was the late-1940s and 1950s. That was when many of the tango artists assembled for the Café de los Maestros show were performing and became legends. After that, the advent of rock music put tango on the decline. Although in recent years interest has once more sparked in this most passionate of music forms. The idea of assembling such a glittering range of musicians came to Argentinian composer and musician Gustavo Santaolalla in 2004. Since then he has co-ordinated the release of a critically acclaimed double album, which recaptured the sound of a lost age, followed by a stirring documentary film and a series of concerts that have been rapturously received in Europe.
1967 16 Café Tacuba Gotan Project 2006 Santaolalla s music career began in 1967, at the age of 16, when he founded Arco Iris, a pioneering band that fused rock and Latin American folk music. Since then he has become one of the most influential and best known Argentinian musicians, winning a Grammy for his production of top Mexican band Café Tacuba and Oscars for his film scores for Brokeback Mountain and Babel. He is also the driving force behind the Bajofondo Tango Club, which, along with the Gotan Project, has popularised a new type of electronic tango, which can often be heard as background music in fashionable boutiques and cafés throughout the world. Café de los Maestros has been, Santaolalla says, his most ambitious project yet. Just the logistics of assembling this group of ageing musicians was daunting. A public concert in Buenos Aires, at the beautiful Teatro Colón was a sell-out in 2006 and led to further shows in Buenos Aires, Paris and London. The singers are backed by an 18-piece orquesta típica (base orchestra) featuring a galaxy of stars, including violinist Fernando Suarez Paz leading the eloquent string section, bandoneón maestro Miguel Angel Varvello and his melancholic sound, and virtuoso guitarist Anibal Arias. He comments, I always knew I d do something serious with tango. This is it. Café de los Maestros is related to many things I ve done in my career. Since I started making records, one of the conceptual bases of everything I have done is 11
7090 200692 2009 related to the idea of identity and knowing who you are and where you come from, and trying to express that. The singers and musicians in the project have been in a fairly fluid line-up. With many of the participants aged between 70 and 90, illnesses have taken their toll. One of the key members on the original recordings, pianist Carlos García died aged 92 in 2006. Inevitably, comparisons have been made with The Buena Vista Social Club and their Cuban disc and film that made millons. While such comparisons are not inappropriate, Santaolalla resists comparisons between him and Ry Cooder, who was the catalyst for the Cuban project. For the 2009 London shows, singer Juan Carlos Godoy cut a similar figure to Cuban singer Ibrahim Ferrer, a veteran whose soft, almost feminine voice on songs like La Mariposa has the requisite balance between melodrama and melancholy, drowning in the swooping strings of the backing orquesta. Uruguay's Nina Miranda has a similar warm cabaret quality to Omara Portuondo, while the 1903 12
1917 splendidly fluid Osvaldo Requena, who shines particularly in duets with violinist Fernando Suarez Paz, cannot help but remind us of the Cuban pianist Rubén González. As Carlos García puts it, If you hear a tango that is played well and you don t feel your chest tremble, find something else to do with your time. The majority of the songs are old classics, many of them, like La Cumparsita from 1917, stretching back to the early decades of the last century. The music is not all swooning strings and lovelorn songs, though. A few tracks, such as El Choclo, whose music is given a stripped-down instrumental arrangement with guitar and bandoneón, sound closer to the more neurotic, fractured world of modernist tango composer Astor Piazzolla. You will have to picture the tango dancers in your mind s eye the woman perhaps with her red dress slashed to the thigh, the man louche and dissipated in a suit, embodying the endless and sometimes deadly game of love and passion central to the music. TANGO: The First World Music Craze The tango seems to have emerged in the lower-class districts and bordellos of Buenos Aires in the 1890s. Despite its lowly origins, it had spread to Paris and New York by the 1910s and rapidly became Argentina s national dance. The world s ballrooms were swinging to a passionate new beat. Some of the songs performed by Café de los Maestros, like El Choclo, were written over a century ago in 1903. The word tango is reputed to derive from an African Bantu word (there are several towns in Africa called Tango). The music developed from an intoxicating brew of African rhythms, indigenous Indian elements and European dance music such as the mazurka, polka and waltz. Unlike other Latin music such as the Brazilian samba, the tango is more European and less African-influenced. The dance is supposed to have originated from the knife fights of Italian immigrants. Early tangos were played with accordions, but these were quickly replaced by the bandoneón, an instrument much more capable of reflecting the melancholy and nostalgia for the Italians who missed the mother country, according to the famous tango composer Astor Piazzolla s biographer, Maria Susana Azzi. 13
Most of the music was nostalgic when first performed, and it is now given a further layer by the poignancy of a conjured up lost world of grace and beauty. Many excellent musicians, such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, have attempted to copy this music, but even if they have the technique they don't have the essential mugre, the dirt which balances the sheer elegance of the music. As one tango musician told me: Just as jazz musicians must swing, tango has to have mugre, dirtiness. [A good tango musician] has to be dirty in the soul. Music so full of yearning seems out of place in a world of online social applications and reality music shows. It seems to come not just from another century and country, but from another planet. As Ry Cooder said about the Buena Vistas, We caught the tail end of a comet. Here the tango stars compelling performances make for a memorable, precious and moving evening. 2009 theartsdesk. comclandestino Manu Chao2010Serpent s Tail This article first appeared in FestMag 2009. Peter Culshaw writes about music for numerous publications including The Daily Telegraph and theartsdesk.com. His book Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao is published by Serpent s Tail in 2010. 加料節目 27.2.2010 ( 六 ) 晚上 7:30-9:30 4.3.2010 ( 四 ) 晚上 7:30-9:00 Festival Plus Co-presented with Hong Kong Arts Centre Film Screening & Talk 27.2.2010 (Saturday) 7:30-9:30pm Film Screening and Talk Lecture Demonstration 4.3.2010 (Thursday) 7:30-9:00pm Bandoneón Talk and Demonstration by Café de los Maestros For details please refer to the Festival Plus Booklet or go to the Festival Plus website: www.hk.artsfestivalplus.org 15
Biographies GUSTAVO SANTAOLALLA 16 19671978 1981 1978 1997 11 21 Gustavo Santaolalla's professional music career started at the age of 16, when he wrote, recorded and produced his first single. From 1967 to 1978, he founded a number of musical groups which released a number of groundbreaking albums. His solo album released in 1981 is considered one of the most influential in the history of Argentine rock. In 1978, Santaolalla moved to the United States. In the mid-1980s, his career took a turn with the new Mexican rock movement. He recorded two albums with the band Maldita Vecindad. Since then he has been behind some of the most relevant and successful alternative artists in Latin America. Santaolalla put Latin American music on the map in 1997 when, in a joint venture with Universal, he launched Surco, his own record label, signing highly successful artists like Molotov and Juanes. In addition to being an award-winning producer with 11 Grammys (including two for Café de los Maestros), Santaolalla has also written film scores, including scores for Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel (Academy and BAFTA Awards, 2006), The Motorcycle Diaries (BAFTA Award, 2004) and Brokeback Mountain (Golden Globe and Academy Awards, 2005). Today Santaolalla continues to head Surco, and also a publishing house, Retina, which has published Café de los Maestros, a companion book to the film and record. He also leads the group Bajofondo which combines traditional Latin American music like tango, milonga and candómbe with contemporary languages like rock, hip hop and electronica. 17
Ernesto Baffa ó 1940 1953 B.B. Ernesto Baffa is a bandoneón player, composer, director and arranger. He debuted professionally in the 1940 s, and has played in the orchestras of Hector Stamponi, Alberto Mancione, Alfredo Gobbi and Pedro Laurenz. In 1953, he took over from Leopoldo Federico as first bandoneón in the orchestra of Horacio Salgán. He has also played with José Basso, Mariano Mores and pianist Osvaldo Berlingieri, and recorded with Astor Piazzolla and Roberto Goyeneche. He composed the tangos B. B. (with Berlingieri), Chumbicha and Further on Bandoneón (with Raúl Garello). Anibal Arias 87 19691975 1980 Anibal Arias trained as a classical guitarist, but very early was given over completely to the tango repertoire. He has accompanied renowned Argentine singers such as Libertad Lamarque, Hector Mauré, Rosita Quiroga and Edmundo Rivero. From 1969 to 1975 he was part of the Quartet of Aníbal Troilo (the great bandoneón player of Buenos Aires). He has been a soloist in the Buenos Aires Tango Orchestra since its foundation in 1980 and is an educational founder of the School of Popular Music of Avellaneda. In addition, Arias plays in a duo with tango musician Osvaldo Montes. He is 87 years old. Juan José Mosalini ó 1943 1977 Born in 1943, Mosalini started playing the bandoneón at the age of eight, and took part in the orchestras of maestros Leopoldo Federico, Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Pugliese. Since 1977 he has lived in France, where he is a renowned teacher, composer and musician in many successful groups. As a soloist he has played with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. 19
Osvaldo Montes ó 78 Osvaldo Montes has played in the orchestras of Miguel Calo, Joaquín de Reyes, Leopoldo Federico and Julio Sosa. He has recorded with Néstor Fabián, Atilio Stampone, Floreal Ruiz, Roberto Goyeneche, and Edmundo Rivero. He has also performed with Alfredo Gobbi, Miguel Calo, Mariano Mores, Pedro Laurenz, the Real Quintet, Horacio Salgán and Libertad Lamarque. He has been a member of the Buenos Aires Tango Orchestra for more than 20 years and plays in a duo with Aníbal Arias. He is 78 years old. Fernando Suarez Paz 17 1978 18 Fernando Suarez Paz has been a member of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires for 17 years. He was one of the founding members of the Tango Orchestra. In 1978, he joined Astor Piazzolla in the famous Nuevo Tango Quintet and recorded 18 albums and film soundtracks with the Quintet. Osvaldo Requena 19831991 Osvaldo Requena is a composer, arranger and director. Between 1983 and 1991, he directed the Juan de Dios Filiberto National Orchestra of Argentine Music. In addition, Requena plays in a piano and violin duo with Fernando Suarez Paz. José Colángelo 20 1955
José Colángelo began his career in 1955 in the Orchestra of Alberto Dávila. He has been a member of numerous tango dance groups and has accompanied singers such as Osvaldo Ribó and Carlos Almagro. He has also played in the orchestras of Leopoldo Federico and Aníbal Troilo. In addition, he is a notable composer. Horacio Cabarcos 1970 Since 1970 Horacio Cabarcos has played with the orchestras of Horacio Salgán, Osvaldo Tarantino and Leopoldo Federico. He also plays with the Sextet Buenos Aires, the Join Trio, the Group Octango, The Musicians of Buenos Aires and the bands of José Colángelo, Osvaldo Requena, Julio Pane and Pablo Agri. Juan Carlos Godoy 871950 Juan Carlos Godoy debuted in 1950 with the orchestra of Mario Luzzi. He sang with the orchestras of Manuel Buzón and Ricardo Taturini before joining Alfredo De Angelis Orchestra, one of the most popular musical groups of his period. His interpretations of Life Goes By, Who Has Your Love and Angelic met with great success. During his 60 s he travelled through Latin America and achieved great popularity in Colombia. He is 87 years old. Nina Miranda 1940 85 Nina Miranda was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. She began her career in the early 1940 s with the Orchestra The Swallows. She has performed with Francisco Reinares, Emilio Pellejero and Juan Cao. When in her 50 s, she joined the orchestras of Donato Racciatti, Graciano Gómez, Lucio Demare and Oldimar Cáceres. Now 85, she has shied away from the spotlight for forty years and returns with enormous success. 21